Cleaning Wounds
by EK
Summary: Response to LJ 1sentence challenge. Away from celebrations of her sister's return, she is alone with him, and he seems to be still hurting.


This was written, first of all, in response to a self-imposed challenge on the 1sentence LJ community (for those keeping track, I used theme set delta). Second of all, I positively was in no mood to do any school-related stuff tonight, so this got finished instead. I hope you like it.

As usual. S7 ain't mine, neither are these two, nor the relationship I impose on them. As per the community's rules, there will be 50 sentences only, each using one word from the list given at the end. But semicolons and commas are a challenger's best friend, yes?

……………………………

The air was cold at the caves, and the air she felt around her from the redhaired young man was even colder. He was seated calmly just outside the hut assigned to the samurai, a small basket of apples beside him, coughing very discreetly. It was obvious that he was worried, both about her being there and about something that hurt him somewhere, and Honoka was beginning to be worried, too.

"It must have been one of the cave bugs that got you," Honoka told him, as she stood just in front of him. She offered her flask filled with coffee made by toasting rice, but he refused it, shaking his head.

He winced and bent his head, almost unnoticed in the dark, but Honoka saw it. She asked what was wrong; he did not answer, and she was left to despair about what to do, or if she was to do anything at all.

One of the doors of the hut opened, and let out the samurai with the yellow hair tied back. "Hei-san, come have a drink with us -- is that stomach wound STILL bothering you?"

Heihachi looked away from the door, still keeping a hand on the side of his torso, and said. "Something in the line of duty, that's all." He did not let the other samurai see his face, and yet Honoka saw him looking firmly at the hard earth at his feet, as he held on to his torso and cringed again.

The yellow-haired samurai shrugged then said, "Well, come in after a while; we'll end the round of drinks at midnight." Both the short-haired young woman and the young man in the leather jacket listened at his footsteps rise and fall while inside the hut. "Besides, we have a nice warm fire here!" Shichiroji shouted to the outside.

Honoka took her lamp closer to where he was and inspected the side of his abdomen, and said, "I think I remember you being more flexible than thiis, and definitely more cheerful than this."

"No one is ever happy about a bomb sent flying your way, without warning," he answered, and bit his lower lip.

"Hei-san, the food's getting cold!" Shichiroji called out again from inside; Heihachi weakly shouted back that he was still not hungry.

Honoka took matters into her own hands, placed a knee over his foot, and deftly but gently undid the leather jacket and the tunic underneath. She loosened the cloths placed over a patch of red at the left side, and saw how grave the situation already was with the wound there.

"Wait here, and don't place the bandage back; I'll be back with a green-leaf potion for that," she said.

She turned her head away from him, wondering why she was doing it. She was still wondering while she rummaged in her own hut for that special potion rather popular in the village – oh, yes, she had hidden it in the hollow of one of the hut's pillars.

She should have considered it an honor to serve one of the samurai personally. The samurai had given her the hope of seeing Mizuki once again. They had even given that light of her life back to her. The sister she had thought was lost to her forever had been returned to her, now celebrating with her friends among the samurai. She had stepped away from the celebrations for a while – she was getting tired of the hulking mass of metal among the samurai – and found HIM seated there, slightly hidden in the darkness.

"You're lucky, I just bought a new box of this," Honoka said when she returned, armed with the potion and several pieces of new gauze and bandages.

"If it's an old wound potion, it's one I haven't heard about," he said, rather icily, "and I think I've seen them all, in the five years I've been walking around."

"One of the best medicines here," Honoka said, "made out of a cave flower, the queen of peace," and placed a dab of the medicine onto a new piece of gauze.

"Poison," he said.

"Not when prepared properly," she answered, applying the potion out of the pretty lacquered box, slowly, even as he tried to keep from squirming.

He let her do her work in silence for a few moments, before he asked, out of the blue, "Don't you miss the rain outside, just staying here?"

"No regrets," Honoka answered, "and raindrops just remind me of tears."

"The scent of flowers, the smell of roses?"

"Heihachi-sama, the secret to living here is in giving up."

"Eh?" he raised an eyebrow, incidentally stabbing at a very small snake that slithered too close to Honoka.

"You have to give up what you used to know, and start a new life," she said, "here, covered by the solid rocks and silent water."

She had a little trouble with a mechanism keeping her flask of water closed, but he took up the flask, tinkered with a spring at one side, then opened the flask, much to her surprise.

He moved a little closer to the moonlight, and settled into a stable position, making it easier for her to move. "It's strange, you know," he said, between clenched teeth as she placed new gauze and bandaged over the wounds. "I know summer is over and it's autumn now, but it's so cold -- how do you actually like it here?" he shivered as she took a cloth and wiped off his sweat.

"But in these caves, the taboo is not spoken, and everyone is accepted," Honoka explained. "What is ugly in a person's past is not forgotten or buried; rather it is, ignored, for lack of a better term."

"War makes people suspicious of other people," he sighed, "some more than others."

She did not answer, but soaked a cloth in warm water, then dabbed at his face with it. "I know you still don't like me," Honoka said as she stood up, "but you'll always be welcome here. She lingered for a while beside him, then said, "I do hope you'll be here again next winter, when it's all over."

He shrugged, took out a pocket knife, then whittled at a small section of wood near the door.

……………………………….

The theme set is as follows: Air, apples, beginning, bugs, coffee, dark, despair, doors, drink, duty, earth, end, fall, fire, flexible, flying, food, foot, grave, green, head, hollow, honor, hope, light, lost, metal, new, old, peace, poison, pretty, rain, regret, roses, secret, snakes, snow, solid, spring, stable, strange, summer, taboo, ugly, war, water, winter, welcome, wood.

Thanks for reading this piece.


End file.
